The first call made from a mobile phone was placed on April 3, 1973 by Martin Cooper, a Motorola engineer and executive, to Dr. Joel Engel of Bell Labs. The prototype phone used weighed around 2.5 pounds! It offered a talk time of just 30 short minutes and took 10 hours to re-charge the massive battery.
Today, it is estimated that there are over 5 billion users of mobile phones worldwide. Most people cannot go through an entire day without talking on their cell phones. Now with their abilities to email on the go, locate almost any destination using internal GPS, and facilitate the playing of highly addicting games, it’s a wonder we could ever live without them.
Recently I have been seeing a variety of articles in the media addressing hearing health concerns in relation to mobile phone use. The following is a summary of some of the proposed health risks, as well as, some suggestions for how to keep yourself safe.
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One concern of cell phone use is risk from radiofrequency (RF) energy emission produced by the phone. RF is a type of non-ionizing radiation; RF fields are low level electromagnetic fields which are produced when mobile phones use their antennas to transfer radio signals.
Sarah Nordberg, AuD is an audiologist at Affinity Hearing in Plymouth. She may be reached at 763-744-1190 for any questions. Affinity Hearing provides free hearing screenings and hearing protection consults to the general public.